Kids Books

Oh, "Peter Rabbit"! I loved this one, and it's Easter, too! Cute bun-buns.

My first love has always been children's books. Do you know John Roberts' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Roberts_%28actor%29) "Mitty Moo" character, or his "Mom voice" from Bob's Burgers? No?! Well, if you're from New York, you should get in on that, because once you have the accent down pat, imagine any story being read to you with that kind of voice when you were a kid. I know, I know! 
It's outrageous, funny, and weird, which is the ultimate good fable.

Such bad squirrels! Jumping up and down on the trains' seats...

I love going back to my bookcase to look through my books. It's like a room full of warm, loving friends who had awesome, interesting experiences and the gift to tell it to you in the most entertaining fashion. It's the best feeling ever, so even though I have a crazy dysfunctional "New Yawk" family, I also have the steadying influence of a thousand rich voices to guide me along the way. As an artist, I know I'm never really alone, especially when I was a small lil Acadian girl trying to make her way on her own.

Hey! I marked this book as my own as a girl. Cool!

 
The greatest gift you can give children is a lifetime love of books and reading, for those times when the people around them fail (and they will), they will have what they need inside them to make it through. Because, dear readers, that's exactly what I did.

 See you soon between the stacks.

I learned my "ABC's and 1,2,3's" with these books.

Another bunny rabbit! What a strange Easter coincidence...

...and I'm still counting crows, too....hmmm.

Yay! A birthday cake! Ooo, the number "8". That's fun to draw...

...and I read each one cover to cover, many times over. See?

Olds

Dang, what an odd-colored clunker...wait, what is that on the hood?

I saw this rusty gem of a car in the grocery store's parking lot, and it immediately caught my eye. I haven't seen this color green, well, ever. Up close, it didn't disappoint me either. It's a real deal vintage item. 
The hood ornament caught my attention, too. I walked closer, playing a guessing game with myself about the type of car it might be. The lines aren't great, and that color was phased out of production a long time ago, that's for sure.

Olds like an old skool jam. What kind of green is that?!

I was surprised to see that the manufacturer was Oldsmobile. Whoa...I've never seen an Olds like this before. Check out the maker's mark! It's fancy, stylish, and daintily decorative, but I don't know. Looking at my photos, something doesn't fit, like someone mounted it on the hood of a junker with some concrete-type adhesive, but who knows? Maybe it was a minor production run that was flawed, or the owner just liked an old-fashioned hood ornament, but one thing is for certain; there's not one car out there like it, and being unique in this crowded world is a form of winning in my book.  It's a great logo.

Can you guess what year this ornament is from? Find out here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/1986-1987-1988-Oldsmobile-Cutlass-Ciera-Chrome-Hood-Ornament-emblem-22514810-/331522636118.

Spring Flowers (Easter 2015)

A small, star-shaped, five-point Campanula.

I saw my first spring flower this week: a tiny pale purple Campanula revealed by my neighbor's patient, gentle gardening hand. 

It was so exciting to see, particularly when our spring calendar days are full of temperature "ups-and-downs". Sometimes we lose sight of the bigger picture that warmer days are ahead, but they certainly are.

Bright yellow star! A crocus finally blooms.

Then a bright yellow Crocus appeared, so bright that at first I thought it was a fake flower fallen off an Easter wreath from someone's door, blown by the strong winds to land in the yard beneath my apartment. 

It was shockingly yellow, beyond what you remember about nature after winters' color palette. After that first yellow flower, they broke out in small patches throughout the lawn the next day and all around town. It's official. Spring has arrived.

 Happy Easter, 2015.

A bunch of cheerful, wildly purple Crocuses.

Two perfect blooms of the native Crocus flower.

Aha! Spring is afoot!

Crocuses are here, there, everywhere! Enjoy the sights and scents of Spring.

Beautiful Morning

Spring Morning (Pearl River, NY - April 2015).

I can tell by the sky that the weather is changing from the different types of cloud formations, and the way the wind moves across the sky. The air feels different, too: I can smell a certain floral sweetness in the air. Ozone from the soil lifts, evaporates, and fills my walks with the scents of spring. Tune in to nature, and let it guide the way for you.  Amen to you on this good day, Friday, April 3, 2015.

Holy Thursday Evening (Pearl River, NY - April 2, 2015).

Let the Sky Be My Guide (April 2, 2015).

Oh, snap!

Absolutely no bullshit on this label and it's locally made. Nice!

You know by now that I am an open advocate for local foods and sustainable resources, that includes supporting our area's agricultural enterprises, be they big or small. Because of this "trend" in consumer buying, "Marketeers" edge in on this niche by any means possible, in search of The Almighty Dollar. How to describe the vicious amped-up caffeinated energy of an ad/promo/marketing personnel accurately? Crazed "Rah Rah!" phony cheerleader type (a.k.a. the "Positivity Princess" from Lego The Movie: http://i.imgur.com/YzcY3AC.gif) addicted to running marathons lest reality catch up to her? YES! 
Bob the Sales Guy with serious mother issues and deep-seed neuroses in plural? Double down! They're like the douchebag office people who don't run companies or start them or make anything, but they will pillage your work to rip you off if they can, without totally killing you off, like a parasite does. Yeah, like that.

Healthy and tastes great: it IS possible to have both.

Same thing with consumer brands and the a#@holes who manage them. They will, in literal truth, kill people off with their poisonous food stuffs to make a buck off that nice Grandma on her fixed Social Security income, or anyone else who gets in their way. Not good people, is what I'm telling you. Up there (in terms of "bad") with a pharmaceutical rep or tobacco company lobbyist in Washington. 
Like, total scum, but of the rich white kind, which means they look down their noses on the poor people who are addicted to the sh%t they sell. Kinda like, if the folks from Soylent Green (both the movie and the book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green) had much less of a conscience. Yeah. They care that little about your ugly, painful, tragic death and huge medical bills. Try selfish, of a monstrous "Godzilla" type size.

Do the work and read. It's not that hard.

So, what to do? No worries, Mom's here. Well, first, you read things. Like, a lot of things, and don't ever stop reading. The worst thing you can do to a "Shopping Monster" is to carefully read the ingredients printed on packaging and the product label.  My mom taught me early on to do it (and how to pronounce the pesky and obscure Latin-based terminology in make-believe foodstuffs, because "Dr. Diane" was also in  food science), and now I'm telling you all about it.

Bitchin' product with great ingredients "Made in the USA". Yay!

There's been some great changes in the fight for our health and that of our children's children, the brightest being the more frequent availability of US-based goods. I'm not some jingoistic isolationist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingoism) looking to inbreed for weirdo reasons. Far from it. I actually believe in commerce and trade as someone who does business at an international level. I also do know that most big producing countries, like China for example, do not have federal bodies like the USDA (http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome) for quality-control or the FDA as a consumer watchdog agency (http://www.fda.gov/) because, like aforementioned "Food Gangsters", they do not care whether you and your family live or die. I know! That's so bad.

Real food made here and certified by a trade organization.

I do find some great things that I want to continue to share with you (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2015/01/like-water-for-chocolate.html), including local products that may also by Non-GMO certified (http://www.nongmoproject.org/), not because I get paid to promote products, because I don't. Want to know my "ad revenue"? You're looking at it. A word-based Google Ads feature that I can control with the type of content I publish by attaching word labels to posted features, and that can go away anytime I want it to. For the record, I think my mom got one payday from them for $11.00 that I asked her to cash and keep, and that was years ago.

Wow! An actual New York State herbal farm product. Cool!

No, I do it because it's the right thing to do and I believe in it. Like, for reals and stuff. Because I would never trust anyone who told me one thing and then did another. Hypocrisy is the worst form of evil in my faith, and now you know about that, too (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+23). A wise person once said that you don't have to remember to tell the truth if you don't lie, and I couldn't agree more. It's the season for it, so why not start now? You'll feel better for it, I promise. I've been to Hell and back, my peeps, and it lives in an office building. An "April's Fool", indeed.

Oh, I see. Joke's on me, as a hidden "f#ck y@*" I didn't see coming.

Roman Bath

In the bath (March 2015).

Being multi-ethnic (and -racial as well as -lingual, but those are stories for another day) has its' distinct advantages. When in Rome, I was mistaken for a homegrown paisana taking her new "Americano" boyfriend for a ride in a pricey tourist joint by the Romano waiter, when in actuality I was on vacation with my soon-to-be annulled husband who was really just an old friend of mine from college. More on that some other time, too. True story! See it here! Click on link below! (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2012/10/boneyard.html)

Roman bath (March, 2015).

 
So when I see myself in pictures, I see different aspects of my ancient histories co-mingling in sometimes the most delightful ways. Angles, lighting, seasons: they all change the way I see myself and it what comes through in the photos.

On one particular morning this week, I caught sight of myself in some large mirrors mounted opposite to me on the bathroom wall while I dried off. I didn't know what I had yet, but afterwards I saw on this day in March that the "Italiana" in me came shining through, perfectly intact throughout the ages, as if I was still cloaked in a toga that was a la moda way back when. 

"Ala Mercadante", still intact (March 2015).

What do you see when you look in the mirror? 
Be honest with yourself, and you may be surprised (like I was) with what you see, particularly about what has come down through the ages intact within your genetic material that's still very much a part of who you are today. I can't think of a more solid case for genetics than the art I see around me that's also a part of who I am, too.

http://www.compassrose.com/static/PompeiiFresco.jpg

Cybercrime

Much hype and paranoid thought is devoted to "Cybercrime", a word right out of bad sci-fi, if ever there was. Truth be told, shoplifting (http://wordhistories.com/2014/08/16/shoplifting/) is as old as the hills, as any ole descendant of a penal colony will tell you....or maybe not. Crime is crime, and criminals exist within any strata of society because evil, pathology, and bad DNA (much like cancer) does not discriminate.

I do have discriminating tastes however, and the two incidences of theft against me that occurred in my life were way before the common usage of computers. The one happened while I was in school and working solo (One of three part-time jobs I had while enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design. Yes, one of the hardest schools on the planet, I know.) at a pizza joint in Providence, Rhode Island, and the second involved a shopping spree in Virginia (caught by the card's red flag system for atypical purchases) because the thief dumpster-dived for old credit card receipts in Brooklyn which led me (through the credit card rep's sage advice to me over an old-fashioned land line rotary phone) to a lifelong habit of shredding old mail that has personal information printed on it.

In other words, crime exists everywhere people are, and some places where they are not. You can hedge your bets by being smart, careful, and level-headed as I am, by using common sense. Here's a quick primer: #1) DO NOT go jogging in Central Park after dark and/or at night, (no matter what century it is), #2) always have your back against a brace when the train comes into the station, as a guard against psychos who push people onto tracks and #3) dancers on the subway are cool to give money to but #4 (and this is an add-on bonus) buying candy in a subway car is a front for drugs because junkies use their kids to collect change by ripping off bodegas on the street for the candy, and then forcing their homeless kid to shake down white tourists on the train for some change. You're welcome!

Same thing with the Internet. No, you are not interesting (nor is your email, or Facebook page, or etc...) but you do want to keep your wits about you. Treat online content and engagements like you are meeting someone for the first time at a cocktail party. Do you tell them about all your surgeries or the nasty details of your perhaps fictional sex life? Hell, no...unless you're as crazy as the person talking to you.

Be careful out there, kids. Life can be one heck of a dangerous wild ride, so wash your hands often (but don't become OCD about microscopic germs), change your underwear, too (but don't get hooked on laundry as a cure-all for anxiety like some desperate suburban housewife), and most importantly, be kind (if you can) to those around you who deserve it the most.

And register with credit agencies like the ones pictured below that I am holding. Add on a security level or two (called "security freezes" and "fraud alerts") et voila! You may now buy from an online retailer, which is safer than talking to a human over the phone who might write down your information, because (and this is very important) a computer is a machine with no agenda that is only as good (or as bad) as the human who programmed it. Now get back out there and live!

Register with one, you register with all. Safety should always be this easy!

http://www.equifax.com/home/en_us 
http://www.experian.com
http://www.transunion.com/

P.S. - Recent emigres please note: the IRS does not, repeat DOES NOT collect taxes over the phone. They use our federal agency for mail called the "United States Postal Service" for official business (unless you're a criminal), because post offices use legal things like dates and time-stamps for verification purposes. Postal workers are also agents for the government. You should be able to trust them (unless they're having a really bad day, and look like they may go "postal". See link here for our lingo: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=go+postal.) Then, call 911 for help.

Foogy Day

Seasons change, time moves on, and large fog banks descend upon us for a few days like a bad horror movie in which those poorly hidden (and scantily clad) teenagers will die for having sex. It's kind of atmospheric. 

I caught a flock of seagulls (I know! I know!) resting in the park yesterday, and it was awesome. Maritime birds typically move inland during storms, but this flock seems to have taken year-round to our clime. Yes! The animals are back, and today is a good day.  
Have a great weekend.

I get to write this caption today: it's "A Flock of Seagulls"!

Whoa! Those clouds have come way down off the hills since midday.

Is that...is that fog coming closer to me?! Cool!

Getting thicker by the minute...

...and now it's covering up buildings and building up speed like it's alive. Good thing I took out that horror movie from the library! Oh....

Acts of Creation

When I was in 7th grade biology lab at Felix V. Festa Junior High in West Nyack, New York (and, yes, I really DID walk 2.6 miles as a child uphill, every day for two years in the rain, sleet, or snow, like an unpaid postal worker carrying a load of heavy school books: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/3+Stegmeyer+Ln,+New+City,+NY+10956/Felix+Festa+Middle+School+Campus,+Parrott+Road,+West+Nyack,+NY/@41.1217371,-74.0001876,3203m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x89c2c29992dab085:0xbcdd2ab48bbf66e3!2m2!1d-74.0015367!2d41.1213911!1m5!1m1!1s0x89c2c288479eb5b9:0xfe59e4b7c9903e94!2m2!1d-73.982099!2d41.123044), my excellent science teacher instructed us to debate Creationism vs. Evolution.

I chose to debate the scientific principle that we know to be true. So, as we sat down on opposing sides, I knew I had it in the bag, but I was shocked to see kids who were considered rather good students choosing the other side, like the head cheerleader and the teacher's pet with the really good grades. What the....wait a minute....I know this kind of situation. It's called being a "Show Pony", and it's how ass-kissing students work the academic system instead of learning from it, for grades and appearances. Good! It means I can outthink the opposition.

And I did, but thinking wasn't really the challenge for me. My main obstacle was keeping myself cool in the the heat of battle. When the spoiled, self-obsessed cheerleader, formerly of the big metal braces, thick glasses, and quick Spring Break nose job (Hi, Lauren!) shouted back to my carbon-dating rebuttal that "Scientists can do anything!", I knew it was a setup. There are days when my microbiologist mom can barely drag herself out of bed (then and now), let alone remake the world on a totally cellular level to be whatever she wants it to be like a magician pulling a hat trick, but this kid didn't seem to understand that. She didn't seem to actually KNOW anything. She was just yelling words back at me without any evidence to support her wild claims about the world we live in. A willfully protected ignorance like hers had eluded me. What was I supposed to do now?!

I colored, shocked and adrift for a moment in her fiercely childish anger at being outsmarted by me so easily, as I looked to my science teacher for help in controlling her student's temper tantrum. She stood behind the row of chairs on the Creationist side and nodded slowly at me, then gave me a silent, "cool it down" gesture. That was it. I took a deep breath, in reply: "But, why? Why would someone do that?" She sputtered, stalled, then failed the debate entirely. "Well, www-welll....I don't know!" You don't know. And she knew it, too. It was a profound victory for me that I never forgot, or that class. Thank you, "Mrs. Science Teacher", from the bottom of my heart, because this Rockland County girl was at least 2-4 years younger than all of her classmates in junior high school, as it was for me throughout my early academic life. I was only 12 years old the first time I tackled that particular fear. You'd be wise to remember that about me, readers. It will serve you well.

“I would say that all our sciences are the material that has to be mythologized. A mythology gives spiritual import - what one might call rather the psychological, inward import, of the world of nature round about us, as understood today. There's no real conflict between science and religion ... What is in conflict is the science of 2000 BC ... and the science of the 20th century AD.”
― Joseph Campbell

Chops

Extra cabbage my mom gave me from her Corned Beef dish will do nicely!

Years ago my boyfriend's sister (then live-in boyfriend I didn't want, then fiancé, and also including soon-to-be annulled tricky disaster of a faux first marriage) went to Le Cordon Bleu in Ottawa, financed yet again by his desperate parents looking for a rock star in their two kid rubble of a messy family. Never happened, but I learned a thing or two, just like I honed my innate business acumen and musicianship on the side: I don't have time for more art forms than the many ones that I already practice at an expert level daily, but I do love to dabble, with the understanding that my dabbling is also at the maestro level. 
It doesn't go away simply because my brain is solving other types of problems, even when I may want amateur status. I like the newness of anonymity, like any other careful observer does.

Voilà! My homemade cole slaw.

And so it is with cooking, too. I cook almost every single day of my life, out of habit and enjoyment, or from necessity and want, so now I cook at the master level. I don't ever want to be a professional chef who runs a kitchen (Oh, good! Another job for me that's hard, low-paying and takes years to pay out), but I like listening. My brief "sister-in-law" did the wacky school stuff like deboning quail and many mindless hours of repetitive chopping, but she did tell me some useful stuff from her classes like: 1) pairing wines with food is a matter of preference that serves the customer well above any other snobby food rule, because a pro kitchen exists to show people a good time, not embarrass them with their ignorance. Want a nice red with chicken or fish? Have it! The "correct" choice is whatever you want and/or what beverage you think tastes good, not what anyone else says about it, unless you specifically ask a Sommelier for advice sur la table. Nothing blows the deal of a deep-pocketed repeat customer than humiliating some bourgeois "Nouveau-Riche" type looking to impress people with their freely thrown cash, so don't do it. Skills!

At the stove every damn day, people!

Same with cookbooks: 2) they can't teach you how to cook because it's about flawless timing, countless hours of practice, and the spills and mistakes that come with real trial and error mixed with ingenuity and bravery, the hard-won experience of a daily habit. That's what I have, whether I wanted it or not, because if I want to eat really good food, I often have to make it myself. And so it was with cookbooks, too. I asked her what her best recommendation was, and she told me the truth, as told to her by one of her professors: 3) it's "The Joy of Cooking", any edition and any version, from any year. The author doesn't tell you how to do it; she gives you a basic template to follow, with versions and iterations based on your choices, preferences, budget, and/or or pantry ingredients on hand. She can't think for you. You have to do that. So that's what I do, in a nutshell, every single day of my life, and maybe some day you can, too, because I don't want to be single forever, people!

Enjoy the fresh new Springtime produce that's hitting our shelves soon. We've earned it.

Perfectly cooked medium/medium-rare lamb chop, a total Spring dish.

Another perfect chop: this one a pork "Scallopine" cut in brown butter.

Perfect sticky rice with sprig of fresh thyme.

One perfect (and tiny) leaf of thyme on a bed of fluffy white rice.

Flew the Coop

Yep, you read it right: "Backyard Chickens for Beginners" bitches!

I believe in the great educational institutions and huge agriculture of New York state like its' yesterday's news, and it totally is. We've been doin' this a very long time. Every once in awhile, I get a whiff of "Big Agra" out west trying to co-opt our rep as the so-called American Heartland, and here's the problem with that kind of thinking: a semi-arid desert does not a fertile river valley make. It really just doesn't make it. Oh sure, you can artificially prop it up as a competition with the use of freely given government hand-outs, but the thing is, we have all of human history on our side, like the way water flows downhill. It's a part of our nature, and I'd love to have you on board with me.

Special thanks to my peeps at Cornell (my oldest bro's Alma Mater for grad school) for keeping our history alive through these small, local satellite programs that serve as outreach to the community. We need you! And I will be in touch with you in the future about growing chickens for their fresh eggs in my backyard. Can't get more organic than that! Future neighbors, please take note now: hens do not "cock-a-doodle-do" at dawn like a male rooster, so know your stuff beforehand. Thanks friends, and please keep reading.  
You are my audience.

http://rocklandcce.org/ 

http://rocklandcce.org/events/2015/04/07/-backyard-chickens-for-beginners

I love a parade

The problem with typical Irish-American culture are all the nasty stereotypes that go along with it, the biggest of which includes the open and sometimes vast consumption of alcohol. It allows people 
not affiliated with our culture a cloud cover to hide behind, and that's getting wildly drunk and/or obnoxious in public without censure, but that's only part of it for us. 

The "pub" is an institution: part community center ("pub", as in a public house that's serves the community), part stage for the art of storytelling that's enhanced with a pint or two, part musician's venue, part restaurant, part psychiatrist's office, part meeting room, part boarding house, part illicit den...in short, it's woven into our culture in many, many different ways, and there's alcohol served as well. 

But, outsiders don't always get those parts, so we tend to stay away from rank amateur hours like the big city parade (that's for tourists!), as we steer our kiddies towards safer havens, like a small town parade. Ours is a bit repetitive and boring, and it sure brings out the loud, nasty drunk who's brazen enough to do it in public for the whole town to see, around children, and under a noonday sun, but that's part of who we are, too. I don't turn away from the bad stuff, and neither should you. We're adults. We can handle it.

Party skills are essential, especially when open container laws are in effect.

Someone's getting the parade "feel"! That's me in the hat and sunglasses.

My café table and aggressor: kids bumped into it and it fell onto my foot.

Tutus from the toy store proprietress in town are always a favorite.

"Hey, I want some popcorn, too!" said the St. Bernard to his new friend.

The Polar Bear Princess wore a tiara over her hat!

Honoring our vets, one pin at a time.

Lots of other geegaws on sale, too.

Nice coat! I love the "Dogs on Parade" part the best.

Our parade always begins with New York's Finest at the lead.

It's not all good looks and glamour: sometimes ya gotta shovel it.

Pomp and circumstance, with music and color. Alright!

Hey, man! Whassup?! Is he walking on stilts?

You know you're good when you can play without hands.

These horses are huge! The sorrel-colored horse is spectacular.

Cute, but the bands' awful. Oh well. Pearl River Pirates are great wrestlers!

North Rockland had the best school band, I thought. Great outfits, too.

No way?! "G.I. Joe with the Kung-Fu Grip" is here! Awesome!

Representing Boston. They took  the "Most Snowfall" category this year.

Big crowd this year, and getting bigger every year.

Soccer kids! They were fun and energetic, also starting a tradition young.

Kids love the parade. They wear costumes and special Irish outfits!

Lots of flash and razzle-dazzle. It's a show, after all!

Adults watching in the shadows, taking it all in.

The party ends with a big dump truck for all the garbage. Reality sets in.

A Gladiator, or two, or three hundred or more, thrown into the mix.

Real heroes with red fire trucks are always welcome at the house on the hill.